Melting Pot

Yesterday evening we closed the study visit of 15 people from Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia to Amsterdam. I organised a meet & greet together with the biweekly couscous meal: a meal organised by Chafik, a wonderful muslim guy from Amsterdam. During this meal people have the oppertunity to talk about the Islam, or to talk about nothing at all, whilst being in a safe environment. Many visitors are closeted. Since we wanted to give our guests a good taste of Dutch food as well we had hutspot & couscous. The meal was also visited by international students from an University in Amsterdam: so there was a great mix of people.

A group of Muslim boys was having the dinner in a seperate cafe of the COC building, but soon they came to other cafe and took over the music. The boys played Arabic music and danced beautiful. Soon a lot of people were dancing together, eating couscous and hutspot: it was a very special moment for me.

Until one of the COC volunteers plugged of the music: "This is not a disco evening and the music has to go off." Such a cold bath after such a nice start of the evening. However, we went to the cafe of the boys and continued dancing and talking. The idea was born to organise a disco after each couscous meal. I hope that this evening is the birth of a long future of melting pots!